Plain Oral Speaking Style

Plain Style

Plain speaking style

The plain oral speaking style: Recent presidential examples

Public speaking can serve a variety of functions: to persuade, to inform, or to entertain. There are various ways to achieve these objectives, including using a heightened style of prose, as exemplified in speeches like John F. Kennedy's 1961 "Inaugural address." But because of its extensive use of rhetorical constructions like parallelism, metaphors, and similes, although Kennedy's speech was powerful, not even the most eloquent person would speak like this on an everyday basis.

In contrast, a 'plain' speaking style tries to mirror everyday speech. Rather than excite people with fancy rhetoric, a plain speaking style seeks to do the opposite: it convinces people because of the simple, matter-of-fact nature of its tone. It may use folksy or colloquial words to convince people of the speaker's honesty. A plain speaking style can be particularly effective when used as a distinct contrast with a flowery or overly scripted style of speech of a competitor. There is also a lack of jargon. A good example of plain speaking can be seen in President Obama's words during the second presidential debate with Mitt Romney, when the two candidates were debating energy policy: "And when I hear Governor Romney say he's a big coal guy, I mean, keep in mind, when -- Governor, when you were governor of Massachusetts, you stood in front of a coal plant and pointed at it and said, 'This plant kills,' and took great pride in shutting it down. And now suddenly you're a big champion of coal" (Second presidential debate: Full transcript, 2012, ABC News).

Obama's use of words like 'big coal guy' shows his attempt to simplify what can be a confusing and complex issue, and also to peg Romney with a label that is likely to be unpopular in most of the country. He tells an anecdote that highlights contradictions in Romney's record, rather than uses rhetorical devices to discuss the issue. None of the words used by Obama would be out-of-place in everyday conversation, and his sentence construction is linear and straightforward. Obama is also very specific, rather than speaks in generalities such as "ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country," along the lines of the Kennedy inaugural address (Kennedy 1961).

However, in contrast to Kennedy, Obama is not noted for being a 'great' plain speaker or debater, and is remembered better for his more flowery rhetorical flourishes, such as his 2008 acceptance speech in which he talked about an elderly African-American woman who had voted for him and whose life seemed to encompass the full arc of African-American's struggles in America. Bill Clinton, Obama's Democratic predecessor, is much more widely known as a master of the plain speaking style. Clinton's strength as a speaker is how he can boil down complex issues such as the credit crisis or the budget deficit into simple, clear terms that can be easily understood by laypersons and which sway them to his side.